125% DPI Outlook 2013 Previews Added

We just added a new feature to our testing suite. It’s not a new client, but rather a new take on an old client.

When a Windows user changes their DPI settings—and yes, this is a Windows setting that causes an Outlook problem–it can warp and break an otherwise pixel perfect email. Because of this, we’ve had many confused customers contact us, asking why an email in their Outlook 2013 looks so different from our email testing preview.

With this new addition, you can now test your email in Outlook 2013 at 125% DPI. Make sure to update your default testing list if you’re not seeing this client appear in your test results. If you see issues and need help fixing them, just check out our blog on coding for DPI scaling in Outlook 2007-2013.

A DPI scaling refresher

DPI scaling is a way to make sure that things look good on a screen of any size. For example, when using a 50″ TV as a monitor, icons may look very small at the default DPI. Making everything 25% or 50% bigger helps to make UI elements appropriate to the screen size.

The problem with DPI scaling in email is that this setting causes some parts of the email to scale in size, while others remain the same. The result is an email that may look distorted and warped. Here’s what happens:

Widths and heights specified in HTML attributes remain pixel values.

Widths and heights specified in VML code remain pixel values.

Other pixel values (px) are converted to point (pt) values.

This last piece is where the problem arises. Desktop scaling affects relative units, like the “pt” values it converts most of your pixel values to. For example, if the user has set their scaling to 125%, a 10pt font becomes 12.5pt.

Accessing DPI Settings

You can access the DPI scaling on a windows machine by navigating to your display settings. Click on “Make text and other items larger or smaller.”

From here you can select 125% or 150% magnification.

You can use this setting on your computer to confirm that DPI settings are the cause of problems in Outlook.

Test with Email on Acid

Want to make sure your email still looks great at higher DPI settings? Get started testing today with our 7 day free trial.